It's a pretty simple concept: Minneapolis and St. Paul don't want them and they find an easier breeding ground in suburbs that least expect their presence. Lock your doors, put that cap on straight and don't wear your hilariously ironic hiphop getup out in public. It's time to live in fear again.

When Jim Swearingen left an inner-city school for a job in Chaska -- the self-proclaimed "best small town in Minnesota" -- the last thing he expected was to be breaking up fights fueled by gang rivalries.

"My friends used to tease me that I was going to come out here and just sit in my office and drink coffee," said Swearingen, now an assistant principal at Chaska High School. "I assumed life was idyllic in the suburbs. That was naive."

He goes on to talk about breaking up the worst fight ever at Chaska High last month. The brawl included nine boys, one of them a gang member, where many ended up flashing gang signs.

The Star Tribune says this is an indicator of what is happening in the quiet and innocent outer ring suburbs of Chaska, Eden Prairie, Shakopee, and Northfield. Last year, police in Scott, Dakota, Carver, Washington, Anoka, and Rice counties dealt with gang members at least 4,200 times. Hennepin and Ramsey counties had at least 12,700 contacts.

And what makes the suburbs so appealing besides their ability to outrun the gang task forces in the Twin Cities? They can more easily target some of their youngest recruits at some of the schools. Officials say gangs send recruiters into mostly white schools to get immigrant members attending mostly white schools.

Maybe this will lead to a revival of the family farm. At least the gangs will wait in those suburbs until the police forces can afford the resources to kick them to the rural towns.